My Mind full of Miniatures

Remember this picture of the furniture I bought at the fair in May? I just loved that tiny cabinet made by Arnold Volker. But when I put it in the dollhouse-within-a-dollhouse, it turned out to be just too small. Yes, you heard that right: too small!!!  Can you believe it? There was no way I wasn't going to use this little cabinet, though. I loved it far too much for that! And weren't those doors actually the perfect doors for the upper part of a sideboard? With drawers underneath?  I gathered all my courage and very carefully cut off the legs. I cut a piece of wood to size and stained all the parts in the same colour. I then glued everything together and added wooden strips to create the drawers. I embellished the latter with some gold decoration, cut from a tiny ornament. The plan was to fill the display part of the cabinet with teeny-tiny books and crockery. I could already picture it perfectly. But once all the parts had been glued together, I discovered that the d...

By adding the extension on top of my dollhouse-within-a-dollhouse, quite a bit of space became available. How would I fill it? This question became easier to answer by reframing it as a different question: what did I really want to try to create on this scale?  Definitely a fireplace! And curtains—would I be able to make those? Only two of the walls offered enough free space. And so the parlour remained on the ground floor, while the first floor became a music/drawing room. The teeny-tiny fireplace (2,9 cm high in total!) had to go in the parlour. I cut the various parts from different thicknesses of cardboard. I painted the mantelpiece dark green, with ‘tiles’ featuring a floral motif on either side. The hearth got a black-and-white marble effect, and I covered the chimney breast with the same wallpaper as the walls. Several layers of semi-transparent paper glued together form a fire. I cut a thin strip of metal to size and folded it into a fender. After adding a little gold ...

Do you know that feeling when you're completely certain about an idea and can't wait to get started? That's exactly how I felt once I'd decided that a large painting was needed above the desk. The internet provided a wealth of inspiration. Birds were popular Victorian pets, especially among ladies and young girls. Apparently, they also loved having their portraits painted with their feathered companions. I chose to use the oil painting below as my starting point. It was painted by Edouard Marie Guillaume Dubufe in 1871 and is titled A Treat for Her Pet . A horizontally oriented painting works much better above the desk, so I cropped the original image (although it was a shame to lose that beautiful dress and velvet cloak!) . I printed it in very pale tones and painted over it with acrylics. I could have drawn the whole thing myself, but working this way removes a bit of the risk of failure—which, admittedly, is something I always worry about. Don't you think...